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THE JETSKI DISEASE
Is it time to come down on motorised clowns?
Category: General
Posted by: tim
Not sure about your part of the world, but jet-skis are becoming a serious blot on the surfing landscape where I live. On any day over five feet you can count on a few of the clowns coming out, stinking up the place, putting wake through the lineup, taking more than there fair of sets, nearly running over paddlers and generally showing total disregard for other surfers in the water. There are some well-known surfers among them too, most of whom I've found to be decent enough people, but there is something about being on a ski that turns them into monstrous dickheads. Many of the skis also sport the logos of big name surf brands. You have to wonder how the shareholders of the publicly listed surf companies would feel about their rapidly diminishing assets and resources being used to create a public danger and nuisance and alienating the vast majority of the surfing community in one of the most populace surf centres on the planet. Let us get this very clear. The Hawaiians who pioneered jet-skis in the surf have one very simple rule: If anyone is paddling, don't tow. It doesn't even matter if you were there first. If someone wants to paddle in by the traditional time-honoured method then move on. This is all so sadly predictable. The authorities, in their infinite wisdom, will wait until someone gets killed and then clamp down on them and ban jet-skis from the surf altogether, so you won't even be able to use them on the handful of days a year when they are the only practical way to catch a wave. Jet ski clowns take heed - you are ruining the surf for everyone else with your noise, stink, greed and incompetence. They are almost entirely unregulated, tested, or policed and the weak maritime laws that apply to them are frequently flouted and never enforced. Close scrapes are a regular occurrence and a fatality or serious injury is only a matter of time. Look what happened at the Quiksilver Pro with the standup paddler run over, and that was by the water patrol. Get an act fools and use your arms like everyone else and work off some of those prodigious guts.